Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – German Baptists did not originate with the Munster Riot – Part SEVEN of SEVEN

Thomas E Kresal Admin · 1 hr May 1, 2020

Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – German Baptists did not originate with the Munster Riot – Part SEVEN of SEVEN

Again Mr. Benedict, speaking of the true Baptists of these times, says: “Their peace principles, and those on oaths, capital punishment , etc. were the same before the rustic war as afterward; and may be traced down, through the history of the Waldenses and other evangelical parties, to the remote depths of antiquity.” (Benedicts History of the Baptists, p. 124)

Menno was, indeed, a distinguished teacher among the Anabaptists during the whole of his ministry; but Mosheim’s account of his gathering up the fragments of the society after their dispersion, and re-organizing them upon new and better principles, is not at all sustained by anything that appears in their own relations. They were the same people in policy and practice before Menno came among them as afterward. We see them almost daily on trial in the criminal courts; and never were a people so uniform, and I may say so dauntless, in their religious professions, as were the German Anabaptists for the century and a half now under review.

The charges against them seemed to have been stereotyped by the inquisitors, and their answers were uniform as to matters of fact, and always mild and explicit; and, as to the men of Munster or Amsterdam —for the scenes at both places were often referred to —they uniformly answered: ‘These were not our brethren—we have no fellowship with such men. The men of Munster were among yourselves,’ or of your party. They did not admit, or even intimate, that they went off from them, or were ever in their connection. But they bitterly complained of having to suffer for the faults of others that they knew nothing about, because some of them agreed with them in rejecting infant baptism.’ It may be proper to observe here, that the term Mennonites has, in history, been applied to different classes of religionists.

Menno himself, and the most of the Mennonites of his day, were strict Baptists in their religious views; but the modern Mennonites are wholly different : they practice pouring for baptism, when I use the term Mennonites, in this work, as synonymous with Baptists, I refer to the true Baptist Mennonites of old.

Presented by Thomas E. Kresal: Excerpt from 1870 Edition of “Baptist Succession” By D.B. Ray pg. 95-96